Voyage Of The Odd Essay

At the start of each month the monks at Suan Mokkh Darmahh International Enter run a 10 day meditation retreat for anyone wishing to learn more about the Theravada Buddhist practice of Ānāpānasati, Mindfulness with Breathing. While I’m travelling around Thailand this seemed to be the perfect way to start the New Year, so I headed South from my cosy now second home at Phuket Backpacker Hostel, and on the 31st of December arrived just before dark at Wat Suan Mokkh to register for the program.

Each mediator agrees on sign up to follow the eight precepts set out, which all seemed easy enough:

• Keep complete silence throughout the 10 days.
• Refrain from destroying all forms of life.
• Refrain from taking things without permission.
• Any sexual activity, mentally, verbally, or bodily.
• Smoking or intoxicating oneself with any intoxicant.
• Having dinner (last meal is lunch).
• Beautifying or entertaining oneself.
• Sleeping or sitting on luxurious beds or seats.

Of all of these the not talking is obviously the one that gets most attention, but that wasn’t even a challenge for me, and only eating two vegetarian meals a day was fine, the breakfast was a bit bland perhaps but lunch was really tasty and probably the healthiest I’ve eaten for a while.

The rest didn’t even seem worth thinking about, the final point about not sleeping on “luxurious” beds I didn’t even remember as one of the points until actually there. So when I was in the retreat signing up I didn’t give a second thought about the wooden pillow that gets mentioned, until I got to my room to discover that the simple accommodation was pretty much a cell with a wooden table with a straw mat on it, and that a wooden pillow is nothing but a lump of wood with a small arch cut into it to shape into the neck.

This was a surprise to say the least, sure it is described perfectly but I expected simple accomodation, not something that was frankly, oppressive. I found it pretty much impossible to sleep on it, it didn’t much help that going to bed  at 9:30pm on the 31st with fireworks blowing up in the sky all around by midnight the sound was immense, the Thai’s really like their fireworks and so it was not exactly a sound nights sleep, when the bell sounded at 4:30am for the first meditation talk, it was hard to get up, but the first day went really well, starting with a morning talk, an hour of yoga, and then meditation instruction before breakfast and chores, then a talk about Buddhism, some walking meditation and sitting meditation before lunch and chores, more meditation in the afternoon, along with some chanting, a soya drink for tea (no food) and in the evening two more meditation sessions and a group walking meditation before lights out at 9:30pm.

This pattern filled each day, but each day the lack of sleep hit me more, and of all the things to do when sleepy meditation isn’t one of them, I found myself dozing a little to easily, and after the first few days I was really suffering and after an imensly informative and rewarding first few days the latter days were a struggle physically, rather then mentally, so on day seven I decided to skip out early rather then punish myself for the last couple of days, any benifit was lost to the unnatural sleeping conditions. I really didn’t feel the need to put myself through it any more.

All in all, I did get a lot from the retreat, but it’s no tourist attraction and if anyone was thinking about doing it themselves I’d really think about doing a shorter retreat first to get a feel for how it feels. And for me as it happens when I made it back to Phuket I ended up bumping into some old friends from my last stint at Phuket Backpacker and making a spur of the moment desision to head off the the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan.

My decision to make the move from Koh Lanta to Phuket Town to spend Christmas at the Phuket Backpacker hostel couldn’t have gone better, while the mood here isn’t traditionally festive lacking the near opressive sounds of Christmas music flooding your senses in every shop and tv advert, but everyone has been in the mood to go out and party, every night I’ve been here I’ve had no trouble finding a group to eat and drink with, and now I feel like I’ve settled here, I know names and faces and there is a regular crowd of people hanging out together along with a daily flow of new faces as travellers come and go on their journies.

Christmas Eve was spent at Patong Beach a short Tuk Tuk ride away and perhaps the most random night out of the whole festive season, as a very touristy location you get a real glimpse into the seedier side of night life and we ate well, drank in various places of varying quality, and ended up at the Club Hollywood where we got Santa hats with flashing stars on them, very festive.

Christmas Day started slow most of the hostel was hung over but by midday a few of us managed to gear up to hunt down some brunch in Patong, relocate to a lake where they did cable sking, and then just down the road had our Thailand Christmas Dinner at a British run pub who did turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings and then back to Phuket Town for a couple of drinks at the current bar of choice, Roxy.

Boxing Day was just as random, heading to eat at a place on the edge of town with my dorm mates where we ate wild boar and frog, both of which we tasty. Then as we drank at Roxy we bumped into a few more people from the Hostel and ended up heading to one of Phuket Town’s biggest clubs, had a drink in the VIP area and watched the live band who apparently are pretty huge in Thailand, though no idea who they actually are.   We got out of there fairly quickly and went back to Roxy via a round about route and stop at another bar due to a wrong turn and finished the night with a couple of cheaper drinks.

So as Christmas goes this was all Same-Same but different, drinks and food all around and everyone in a good mood, but the sun and heat distracts from the fact it’s Christmas back home and that makes it easier not to dwell on what I’m missing.

All in all I made exactly the right choice hitting this hostel and the people I’ve meet here are Awesome, lots of people are leaving today, and I’ll be moving on myself soon but I’ll be back here when I pass through the region again as it makes a handy base, and I have great feel for the place now.

A couple of days ago as I took a walk down Klong Khong beach as I had every evening for the last week I decided that it seemed a bit quieter then the past few days, a few of the people I had been talking to regularly had moved on and it didn’t seem like anyone had come to take their place. So pretty much there and then I decided to book rooms in Phuket and a boat trip over from Koh Lanta that left 7:30 the next morning.

Getting to Phuket was a very enjoyable boat trip, appraching Koh Phi Phi on the first boat we transfered to the second boat still out on the sea, so I didn’t really step foot on the island, but got some good views of it from not to far away, and then on to Phuket, the whole trip was as always a step by step mission of swapping tickets and getting stickets (I ended up with three stickers in total this time) interestingly the boat company involved used different coloued stickers for different destinations so they should easily herd people around, pretty clever I thought.

I stayed one night in a hotel, which was okay but I was pretty keen to get to my ultimate destination, the Phuket Backpacker Hostel in the heart of Phuket town. The place got Awesome reviews on both websites I checked, and was in my price range of 300 bhat per night (With a slight increase over christmas to 400 bhat) but now I’m here it’s definatly the kind of hostel I was hoping for, the common room has plenty of people comming in and out all day, there is free wi-fi and computers with internet which saves a small fortune on it’s own, and there is a massive and diverse DVD collection which means people ar constantly throwing something on, and I can just pick up a couple of cheap beers and snacks from the 7/11 next door and have a cheap night in, banter with people.

Just around the corner Phuket’s food market provides and interesting place to mooch into and if feeling adventerous sample the various meat on a stick type products, some of which are clearly identifiable things like chicken wings for around 30 bhat, others are sausages and meatball type things which are cheaper and I find, best left unidentified as to what they actually are.

There are beaches just a bus or Tuk Tuk away too, last night myself and six Australian chaps I meet in the common room headed over to Patong beach for a couple of beers – It was a frankly incredibly seedy place, like Amsterdam with sand and fake rolexes for sale, but with out that European cleanliness that made the Dutch capital seem much safer. Even so, it was full of tourists of all kinds, from families with small children, to older white gentlemen with disturbingly young Thai girls on their arms. We left the place after a couple of beers and came back via the 7/11 where we picked up more beer and nibbles and watched the movie back at the Phuket Backpacker

So this is where I plan to spend Christmas, the flow of people, cheap food options all around and comfortable rooms (Not to mention hot showers!) makes this an ideal place for me to settle for the next week, on the 29th I’m schedualled to move on, so will see how things pan out and either head further south to Had Yai with the intention of starting the new year at a Meditation Retreat, else I’ll stick around here and party, and then move on to Khao Lak to do some volunteer work building kids play parks and other projects.